Blood flow is a generic term used to define movement of blood through blood vessels, which can be quantified in terms such as volumetric flow rate (i.e., volume/time). Tissue perfusion is distinguished from vascular blood flow in that tissue perfusion defines movement of blood through blood vessels within a tissue volume. Tissue blood perfusion may be quantified in terms of volume/time/tissue volume (which may also be amount of blood/time/tissue amount (examples of “amount” include volume, area or mass)), though on occasion tissue mass is used instead of tissue volume. More specifically, tissue perfusion relates to the microcirculatory flow of blood per unit tissue volume in which oxygen and nutrients are provided to, and waste is removed from, the capillary bed of the tissue being perfused. Perfusion is associated with nutritive blood vessels (i.e., micro-vessels known as capillaries) that comprise the vessels associated with exchange of metabolites between blood and tissue, rather than larger diameter non-nutritive vessels. However, compared to blood movement through the larger diameter blood vessels, blood movement through individual capillaries can be highly erratic, principally due to vasomotion, wherein spontaneous oscillation in blood vessel tone manifests as pulsation in erythrocyte movement. In certain cases, for example, vasomotion can result in a temporary arrest of blood flow within the capillary bed for periods of up to 20 seconds, in order to facilitate oxygen diffusion from the individual erythrocytes through the capillary vessel wall and into adjacent tissue being perfused. Consequently, spontaneous oscillations in capillary blood flow can be independent of heart beat, innervation, or respiration. Such flow cannot be defined simply in terms of volume/time; instead, it must be characterized on the basis of the aggregate amount of blood in all the blood vessel (i.e., capillary) segments within a given volume of tissue. This characterization is reflected in the fact that all the measurements of capillary blood movement include a tissue volume-related dimension.
There are many circumstances in which medical practitioners and other clinicians desire to correctly assess blood flow and/or tissue perfusion in tissue. For example, in treating patients with wounded tissue, clinicians must correctly assess blood flow and/or tissue perfusion in and around a wound site, since poor tissue perfusion will have an adverse effect on the healing process. An accurate assessment of blood flow and/or tissue perfusion increases the chances of successful healing of both acute (e.g., surgical) and chronic wounds. The assessment of perfusion dynamics is also important in other clinical applications, such as pre-surgical evaluation of patients undergoing plastic reconstruction procedures (e.g., skin flap transfers), or assessment of viability and function of cardiac tissue during cardiac surgery (e.g., coronary artery bypass graft surgery, a partial left ventriculectomy or a left ventricular reduction via the Batista surgical procedure, etc.).
Quantification of tissue perfusion is of interest to clinicians across many surgical and non-surgical specialties. Although simple binary assessment (flow versus no-flow) may be adequate for some clinical applications, quantification of perfusion in standard measures is desirable in many other clinical applications. To date, quantitative assessment of tissue perfusion has remained elusive.
Photoplethysmography (PPG) is an optical technique that can be used to estimate changes in microvascular blood volume, and PPG-based technology has been deployed in commercially available medical devices for assessing pulse rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and cardiac output. A typical output of such devices is the PPG waveform that corresponds to the heartbeat of the subject. PPG has not been utilized to provide measurements in standardized units when assessing blood flow. A PPG technology with such capabilities would enable routine measurements of blood flow in tissue, including perfusion measurements, to be made in standardized units of volume/unit time/tissue area. This would be of significant value to clinicians, as such measurements would allow direct inter-site and inter-subject comparisons.